Monday, January 07, 2013

On Protecting Your Dream

Dear American Family Insurance**,

You cannot "protect dreams." You can only "protect" stuff, and even then, you do not protect them so much as offer to reimburse a percentage of their value, minus deductible should my "dream stuff" be damaged in a way consistent with your policy.

I have a dream. It's to become a best-selling novelist. Barring that, I'd settle with making sufficient sales that I can make a car payment each month. However, the dream is not the car or the stuff, but the accomplishment and what it means. Dreams are achievable, but not protect-able.

While I am glad to pay insurance against some unforeseen circumstance that might ruin my stuff, I'll work to achieve and sustain my own dreams, thank you very much. Somehow, I don't think you have any power in that realm.

Please reconsider your commercial.

**When I first posted this, I wrote "Dear State Farm," but listening to the radio today, I realized the annoying "We'll protect your dreams" commercials are American Family Insurance...which goes to show you how effective they've been in making me remember them. State Farm, incidentally, has some funny ones, like the guy who combined auto and home insurance and was so glad because he missed the garage door...again. This one esp. makes me laugh becuase I had a friend in high school who was so nervous about hitting the garage as he backed out that he kept backing, moving forward, twisting the wheel, backing again...forward and back, forward and back, until he wedged the car into the garage instead of exiting it. My apologies to State Farm, not that anyone from there ever read this or would care.